Brad Warbiany and Doug Mataconis have been very welcoming, and my new realm into libertarian thought should be fulfilling and rich.

I’ve been at United Liberty for two years, starting with the 2008 election and running all the way up to coverage of Arizona’s discriminatory immigration law. My work goes back even further, back to the San Francisco Examiner and the neighborhood newspapers North Seattle Herald Outlook and Madison Park Times in Seattle, Washington.

In the times we live in, there seems to be a political shift going on. The United States is becoming more ethnically diverse, the economy continues to stagnate, and government is making short term maneuvers without foreseeing long-term effects. On the other side of the coin, the Right, who talk a lot of jive about freedom, are parading their own twisted form of nationalism. In these times, it’s important to try to solidify and distinguish the libertarian movement as a separate alternative to the forms of authoritarianism so far proposed to us. I hope my work at The Liberty Papers will help to do that.

I am also currently working on a book on the future of race in politics. It should be finished within the year and published subsequently.

Like this:

Welcome to The Liberty Papers, Michael. I’m sorry to say that I’m not familiar with your work (I’ll have to go through the archives) but I look forward to your contributions here.

Procopius

Truth be told, I’m not excited about your introduction for a couple of reasons.

First, is that by the content, you are preoccupied with race. In any political issue, race obsession is a method of confusing the root issues of the argument, unless the issue was prima facie racial to begin with. Racial pundits’ primary function is to lower the level of debate. This is done to lower the level of conceptual understanding amongst the masses.

Secondly, your mention of nationalism. I fully recognize that you might have mentioned the term ‘nationalism’ to mean “the wrong kind of…” by its apparent context, however, I think what is more likely is that you are more of an anarcho-capitalist style of libertarian who abhors any form of nation-state sovereignty. This type of libertarian in my opinion contributes little in the way of practicality in light of reality. The reality here is that we live in a welfare/warfare state and this form of libertarian chooses to pretend that that does not exist when forming their arguments for no borders or certain forms of property rights. Hopefully I am wrong in this guess.

Third, you have made clear that your mindset is squarely within a left/right paradigm. While I would admit that using thought in the left/right paradigm is practical at times when superficially describing a political situation, you seem to possibly believe that there is a true “left” and “right” in regards to the power elite, to include the power elite ranking members of our national lawmaking bodies.

Hopefully I am wrong about all of this and you will write some enlightened things.

Michael O. Powell

Procopius – You are wrong! =P

I will admit that recent events in my life have put race on the forefront of my mind, where it hadn’t been for a while. I’m working on a book on it and will try to keep it to that.

My intro only was to illustrate how my writing would be outside the left/wing paradigm. I’m a utilitarian, not an anarcho-capitalist, and am realistic to see the advantages of a localized, democratic managerial state like those you have in some small cities, towns throughout the West.

My favorite writers are Christopher Hitchens and Ayaan Hirsi Ali, both distinctly outside of the left-right dichotomy, or in a messy place somewhere in it. Give me a chance. You may like what you see.